In the long run, the more populous the country (provided that it is lower than the country's natural carrying capacity), and with the right development plan, the greater the space for the development of the country's comprehensive national strength. We think so today, and so do the rulers of antiquity.
Compared with today, in ancient times, manpower was needed to develop agriculture and the military. Thus, the rulers of each dynasty wanted to increase the population of their country so that the country would become richer and stronger. However, due to wars, diseases, disasters and other reasons, the number of people in ancient China fluctuated greatly.
Until the Qing Dynasty, there was an explosive growth, and the population grew from 70 million to 400 million. So, in the countries of the same period, why did only the Qing government achieve rapid population growth? Today, we will talk about the reasons for this.
The turbulent era of the late Ming Dynasty
In 1619, Houjin Nurhaci declared a "rebellion against the Ming" and engaged the Ming army in present-day northeastern Liaoning, which was defeated. After this "Salhu War", Hou Jin went all the way south.
The Ming Dynasty, which was already in its twilight years, had to block the Houjin offensive while dealing with the attack of Li Zicheng's rebel army. Many years later, the Ming Dynasty was destroyed by Li Zicheng, and in the same year the Qing army entered the customs. In the next twenty years, the iron horse of the Qing army flattened the regimes of Dashun, Daxi, and Nanming.
Later, the Qing court quelled the San Francisco Rebellion, destroyed the Ming Zheng regime in Taiwan, and unified the whole country. At this time, the ruler was already Kangxi, and after decades of war, the people also ushered in a stable life.
However, the population fell sharply at the beginning of the Qing Dynasty. According to some records, at the peak of the ming dynasty's population, there were about 150 million people (different opinions from all walks of life, here is a relatively comprehensive data), and in the early years of the Qing Dynasty, the population was only 40 to 50 million, why is this so?
The reason for the sharp decline in population
One of the reasons is the years of war and the massacre of the people by various forces. Among them, Li Zicheng's rebel army slaughtered the city after breaking through Wuguan and Yanshi: "Whoever has a wealth will not be broken; the clan of clothes and crowns will not be able to live in peace, and even have five punishments and the dead abound."
During the siege of Kaifeng, Li Zicheng's army used the Yellow River to break the embankment and introduce the river into Kaifeng, and overnight, the white waves in Kaifeng city were fierce, and the corpses became mountains. The number of residents went from 370,000 before the war began to less than 30,000 at the end.
Another leader of the peasant rebel army, zhang Xianzhong, the "murderous demon king", carried out more frequent massacres. When attacking Huoshan, Zhang Xianzhong's army carried out a cruel act of "taking pleasure":
"There are those who bind men to their fathers, who fornicate their wives and daughters, and then who kill them." There are those who drive away fathers and daughters and then kill them... The children who have been plundered are hundreds of thousands, and they cannot be taken with them before they go, and they are killed as much as they can, and the violence and cruelty have never existed in ancient times. ”
When entering Chengdu, Zhang Xianzhong's army slaughtered the city for three days, and then, fearing that the traitors would leak the whereabouts of the rebel army, ordered the army to massacre the people three times. After the Qing army entered the customs, it committed heinous crimes when attacking the territory of the Southern Ming government and suppressing the uprising.
For example, the Qing army slaughtered 25,000 people in Zhaozhou, 5,000 in Jinan, and 7,000 in Tongguan. After the Qing army captured Yangzhou, it even massacred the civilians in the city.
At that time, heavy rain poured down, and the Qing generals announced that a massacre had been carried out in yangzhou for ten days. After the massacre, the monks collected 800,000 corpses. In addition to the war, the sudden change in climate at the end of the Ming Dynasty was also a major reason for the sharp decline in population.
According to ancient records and the research of modern scholars, around 1620, there was a long period of ice and snow weather in South China, the water level of rivers and lakes dropped significantly, and some areas were even severely frozen.
Around 1640, Jiangsu even had extreme weather with heavy snow in May and frost in June. As the temperature plummeted, the humidity of the air also dropped to a low value, and during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the precipitation in the eastern region dropped significantly, even by as much as 50%.
Drastic changes in the climate have led to widespread famine. Lower temperatures and lower precipitation have caused drought in important farming areas and crop yields have plummeted. This was followed by the spread of diseases such as plague.
The population is growing rapidly
To sum up, after the Qing rulers were stable, the most important thing to do was to restore people's livelihood. However, after all, it was a foreign nationality that entered the Central Plains, and the opposition of various uprisings throughout the country was not uncommon, and it was not until the Kangxi period that it was alleviated.
When Kangxi ascended the throne (1661), the population of the Qing Dynasty was estimated to be about 65-70 million, and by the fourteenth year of Daoguang (1834), the population had reached about 400 million, and this number continued until the Republic of China.
So, what caused the Qing Dynasty's population to explode in less than 200 years? First of all, the political situation was stable, during this time, the Qing Dynasty did not have any national wars, and large-scale uprisings were relatively rare, so the political situation was relatively stable.
The people were able to live a stable life, develop agriculture, handicrafts and commerce with peace of mind, and the economy gradually recovered. Naturally, the population will grow rapidly. Moreover, under the small-scale peasant economy of feudal society, it is unlikely that "the economy is too developed, resulting in a decline in the people's desire to have children."
Moreover, agriculture has also been developed. During this period, the impact of the abnormal climate at the end of the Ming Dynasty has gradually recovered, and the government has begun to help agricultural development. Beginning with the Shunzhi Emperor, the government organized or encouraged displaced people to relocate to sparsely populated areas and reclaim wasteland.
The imperial court also stipulated that once the reclaimed wasteland was certified by the government, it could be owned by the peasants. At the same time, the Qing government also repaired the water conservancy measures damaged by the war and introduced high-yield crops. These measures have resulted in a forty per cent increase in arable land and a rapid increase in food production. Deaths due to starvation are also decreasing.
Finally, there is the reform of the agricultural tax system. During the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the tax system of "spreading ding into mu" was introduced, which incorporated Ding Yin from successive generations into the field and levied, and abolished the poll tax. In general, agricultural taxes have been simplified, and to a certain extent, the personal control of farmers has been relaxed.
In this way, the people rarely lie about the number of people, the population movement between regions is more frequent, the people do not have to worry about having more children and carry heavy taxes, and the willingness and fertility rate of men and women in love will naturally increase.
The above is the main reason for the growth of the population of the Qing Dynasty from 70 million to 400 million, compared with other countries in the same period, the population growth rate of the Qing Dynasty is much higher. Since this period, the population of our country has remained at the forefront of the world.
In recent years, the issue of fertility and population growth has often become a hot topic of discussion, and the population growth rate in many countries has slowed down, and even shown a negative growth trend.
In order to solve this problem, various countries have also taken pains, some give financial subsidies, and some improve the welfare benefits of husband and wife after childbirth, but overall, the results are very small.
Normally, childbearing should be a freedom, but why are governments so concerned about their own population growth rates? The reason is simple: population is the root of the country's productive forces, but also an important factor in international competition, and to attach importance to population is to attach importance to future development. What do you think about that?